


Solstice

by pterawaters



Series: Mr. Sandman [5]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Blended family, Eavesdropping, F/M, Family, Flirting, Fluff, Humor, Multi, Period-Typical Homophobia, Polyamory, Post-Season/Series 02, Sibling Bonding, Studying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-18 00:28:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21502297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pterawaters/pseuds/pterawaters
Summary: Sometimes the family you find is just the family you needed.
Relationships: Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, Joyce Byers/Jim "Chief" Hopper
Series: Mr. Sandman [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1527764
Comments: 6
Kudos: 190





	Solstice

**Author's Note:**

> Have a fun little one-shot that takes place within my Mr. Sandman AU!

**_December 1984_ **

Jonathan didn’t mean to overhear the conversation, but he overheard it anyway. He came down with a fever during third period, and the nurse said he could drive himself home. He thought the stress of not sleeping enough combined with almost losing his brother _again_ got to him. Or maybe it was just late fall and that’s when these things hit anyway. 

He let himself into the house, vaguely noticing that both his mom’s car and Hopper’s truck were parked out front. Whatever. Hopper had been coming by more and more frequently over the last few months. Jonathan could deal with him being in the house if it made his mom happy.

He planned on putting his headphones on and sleeping until someone woke him up for dinner, but before he could press play on the stereo, he heard Joyce say, “And you didn’t think it was relevant for me to _know_?”

“The more people who _knew_ ,” Hopper responded, his voice frustrated, “the more danger everyone would be in!”

“Like we haven’t all been keeping things in for the past year?” Joyce shot back at him. “Like we haven’t all had practice knowing when and when not to talk? I’m not saying you should have told the boys, Hop. God knows it would have been so much harder on them. But you should have told me!”

Hopper’s reply was unintelligible through the wall, but Jonathan thought it probably wasn’t that coherent to begin with. 

“What, don’t you trust me?”

“I trust you!”

“You trust me enough to sleep with me–” _Okay, too much information!_ “–but not enough to tell me that you’ve secretly adopted a child?” Joyce’s laugh was more of a sarcastic punctuation than anything else. “Oh, and not just any child! The child who saved _my son_ from being killed! You don’t think this little, tiny piece of information was maybe, _maybe_ relevant to my interests?”

Hopper sounded like he was speaking through clenched teeth when he replied, “You didn’t _need_ to know!”

“This is a relationship, Jim! Not the fucking army!” Jonathan thought he recognized the sound of his mother stomping her foot. “What if something had happened to you? And no one knew Eleven was up at that cabin? How long would she have waited for you to come home?”

“I–”

After a long silence, Joyce said, “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“Jesus, Joyce.” Hopper sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

Her reply was sharp and short. “An apology wouldn’t hurt.”

Hopper’s voice did this thing Jonathan had never heard before. It went all soft and Jonathan would almost swear he was smiling. “I’m very, very sorry and I won’t do it again. Okay?”

Jonathan didn’t wait to hear his mom’s reply. He leaned out of bed just far enough to reach the stereo and turned it on. The music in his headphones was too loud for his aching head, so he turned it down a few notches and fell asleep.

He woke up to his mother placing a cool cloth on his forehead and mouthing that he should go back to sleep. His fever dreams were weird, but at least they weren’t nightmares. 

~*~

**_January 1985_ **

The first night Hopper brought Eleven over for dinner, it was a Sunday night in January, and Jonathan also had Steve and Nancy over. Steve was helping Joyce in the kitchen, while Jonathan and Nancy played a card game with Will at the dining room table. When there was a knock at the door, Joyce was the only one not looking around at the others in confusion. Before Jonathan could even get up from his chair to go get the door, Joyce had hurried over with a big grin on her face. 

Oh, great.

Hopper came through the door first, giving Joyce a hug before reaching back and leading Eleven in by the hand. “It’s okay. You know everyone here.”

Jonathan had only ever met El twice: once when they built her a sensory deprivation tank, and once when she threw a dead demo-dog through his front window. He supposed that was probably as close to knowing someone as El could get at this point. 

Jonathan gave her a friendly wave, but Will got out of his chair with a big grin on his face and hugged her. El didn’t seem to mind the hug, smiling and laughing a little as she patted Will’s arm. “I thought you said the Snow Ball was a one-time outing?” Will asked her, before turning to Hopper for clarification. 

“We’re still keeping a low profile,” he replied, closing the door behind them and taking his boots off at the door. El followed his example, and while Joyce took their coats, Jonathan took her place in the kitchen. 

“Did you know they were coming?” Steve asked him in a low voice, pulling a pot off the stove and setting it on the counter. 

“No,” Jonathan told him, reaching into one of the cupboards for a serving bowl. If it had just been Steve and Nancy eating with them, they would have put the pot of vegetables straight onto the table. This felt like a little more of an occasion. 

Steve snorted. “I asked why we were making extra, and she told me it was for leftovers tomorrow.”

Jonathan laughed, but handed Steve the bowl just the same. He got down the plates and handed them to Nancy so she could start setting the table. “Oven done?” he asked Steve when that was accomplished. 

“Fuck if I know,” Steve replied, stepping back from the stove. “Your mom was in charge of that stuff.”

“That stuff” appeared to be baked chicken of some sort, and it looked like it was about to turn the corner from done to overdone. Jonathan motioned for Steve to hand him the potholders.

When Joyce returned to the kitchen, she, Jonathan, Will, and Steve all worked together putting the rest of the table and meal together. Nancy helped as best she could, but she hadn’t eaten with them over the summer nearly as often as Steve had. She also didn’t have as much cause to avoid her parents as Steve had either. 

In the end, Joyce and Jonathan sat on either end of the dining room table, with Hopper and El on one side, while Will, Nancy, and Steve all squished together on the other. 

Jonathan watched as Hopper gave El a look, to which El nodded and then said, “Thank you for dinner.”

“Oh, you’re welcome, sweetie,” Joyce answered for all of them. 

They ate in silence for a moment before Hopper cleared his throat and said, “I heard Hawkins won against Roane on Friday.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, brightening up at the mention. “It was close, but we managed to pull off the W.”

“Steve made the last shot of the game,” Nancy told the others, smiling over at Steve.

“You guys didn’t tell me that,” Jonathan realized out loud.

“You’d know if you had been there,” Steve said, falsely sweet in his tone and smile. On the other side of Nancy from Steve, Will snickered.

“I was working!” Jonathan insisted, noticing the way El smiled, too. Joyce shared a look with Hopper and this was not how this was supposed to go at all. Narrowing his eyes at Will, Jonathan asked, “So how did that Math test go on Friday?”

Will narrowed his eyes back at Jonathan. “Fine.”

“What is math?” Eleven asked. 

Jonathan noticed that the only person around the table who didn’t look surprised at this question was Hopper. He told El, “It’s numbers. Adding and subtracting, like we’ve been working on.”

“Oh, numbers,” she nodded, putting more food onto her fork. “Math,” she repeated, seemingly pleased as she took another bite. 

Nancy, on the other hand, looked concerned. She turned to Will, asking, “What topic are you guys covering in Math right now?”

“Mostly order of operations stuff,” he told her. “We’re starting to work in exponentials and roots, and Dustin really loves it, but I don’t know…”

If Jonathan had to guess, he would say Hopper’s expression was saying something along the lines of, “ _Oh, shit_!”

Either oblivious to Hopper’s face, or pretending to be, Steve told Will, “Ah, don’t worry about it. Geometry in freshman year is way easier than all that pre-algebra stuff.”

Jonathan put his fork down in surprise, asking Steve, “What?”

“What?” Steve asked, meeting Jonathan’s eyes for a long second before he shrugged. “Wasn’t it?”

“I studied my ass off for that class and barely got a B,” Jonathan admitted. “Tenth grade algebra was way easier.”

Steve put his fork down with a gasp. “I will fucking fight you, Byers.”

“Language, Steven, please,” Joyce said with a roll of her eyes. 

Jonathan was left staring at Steve, seriously doubting his taste in romantic partners, while Nancy told Will, “I can help you with it, if you want.” 

“Oh, yeah. You should do that,” Steve said, pushing past the geometry debate for the time being. “Nancy’s really good at explaining stuff. Especially math.”

Nancy looked over at El. “I mean, if it’s okay with your dad, I could teach you some stuff too.”

El eagerly looked up at Hopper, who washed down his bite of food with a swallow of Coke. “Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat a little. “That would probably be good.”

El grinned, first at Hopper, then at Nancy. Nancy smiled as well, and Jonathan was always happy to see her happy.

~*~

**_March 1985_ **

Jonathan finished up his homework and got ready for bed. Then he stuck his feet in his shoes and shrugged on a jacket. His wallet went in his left coat pocket and his keys in the right one. Careful to move quietly so he wouldn’t wake up Will or his mom, Jonathan made his way to the front door. 

As soon as he stepped through it, a deep voice from the porch asked, “Where the hell are you going?”

Looking over, Jonathan saw Hopper sitting on the porch, a cigarette glowing dimly in his hand. 

“Steve’s,” Jonathan told him.

“It’s almost eleven,” Hop pointed out, standing up, but not stepping any closer. Not standing over him. Not like Lonnie would do whenever Jonathan got in trouble as a kid. “You should be sleeping.”

“I’m gonna sleep there,” Jonathan insisted, taking a step off the porch.

“Ah!” Hopper said, stopping Jonathan. “You're seriously heading over to your…" Hop pressed his lips together and made a frustrated noise. "...your _b-boyfriend's_ place? It’s a school night! I don’t think your mom–”

"She knows," Jonathan insisted. Was Hopper really trying to parent him right now? "I sleep over there all the time. It's fine. Don't worry about it."

"And _Steve's_ parents are really okay with it?" Hopper crossed his arms over his chest.

Jonathan gave a huff, but he didn't respond. Hop had to know Steve’s parents weren’t the type to accept him dating another guy. Obviously they didn’t know Jonathan spent the night. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Jonathan sighed and turned more fully toward Hop. He wanted to point out that he had no authority here. It wasn't like he and Joyce were married or anything. He wanted to tell Hop to fuck off and mind his own business.

Except, he was important to Jonathan's mom. And he was important to El. And Steve seemed to like him a lot. So, it wasn't like Hopper was an asshole. He probably meant well. 

He wasn't like Lonnie.

Hopper wasn't like Lonnie, which meant he was probably good for Joyce. If Jonathan was an asshole to him and drove him away? No, he wouldn't do that to his mom.

So, Jonathan went for the emotional appeal. "Steve gets nightmares. He won't sleep if I'm not there." Jonathan did not admit out loud, _and I won't either_.

Hopper took a drag of his cigarette, blowing out the smoke and just looking at Jonathan. He shook his head, before saying, "Fine. But I'm talking to your mom about this in the morning. If you're lying to me about having the okay from her, I swear to god, kid…"

"What? You'll what, Hopper?" Jonathan asked, turning away. His temper got the better of him and he muttered, "You'll beat me up?" He took two steps toward his car before a hand came down on his shoulder.

Jonathan turned, putting up his fists, ready to fight back, even though Hopper was enormous and could probably kill him if he wanted.

"Jesus," Hopper said, letting go of Jonathan's shoulder and putting up his hands, taking a step back. His voice was deadly serious when he said, "I'm not your dad, Jonathan."

"Yeah, no shit."

Hopper nodded, his moustache bobbing around a little as he looked at Jonathan. "Lonnie was always a mean bastard. Even back in school. I take it he didn't grow out of it?"

Jonathan shook his head.

Sticking out his chin as he nodded, Hop looked away. "I'm, uh… I'm sorry your dad is such a shithead."

The description was so unexpected and so accurate that Jonathan was surprised into laughing. 

Hop smiled. "So maybe we could be, like, civil or something? For your mom's sake?"

"We could do that," Jonathan said with a nod. "You know, for her sake."

Nodding out toward Jonathan's car, Hopper said, "You'd better get going. It's late."

Giving him a final nod, Jonathan said, "See you, Hop."

"See you, kid."

~*~

“How’s it coming?” Steve asked as he delivered another round of milkshakes to the table and sat down next to Nancy. 

“Good,” said Will from the other side of the table, pulling his green-and-brown grasshopper shake closer so he could take a sip. 

Beside him, El nodded and grabbed her peanut butter banana shake, closing her eyes as she drank from it. 

“What happened to Mike?” Steve asked, poking at the chocolate-cherry shake that was coming out of his paycheck whether anyone drank it or not. 

Nancy drank from her chocolate shake as she pointed across the restaurant. There, all the way at the farthest booth, Mike sat pouting. “He was being a nuisance, so I banished him over there,” Nancy explained, taking the sheet El passed over the table to her. 

With a chuckle, Steve kissed Nancy’s cheek, then took pity on Mike and brought the shake over to him. “How’d you get yourself banished?”

“I don’t know,” he said, sulking as he pulled the straw out of the shake and licked it. “Nancy _knows_ this is the only time in the whole week that I get to see El. I think she’s punishing me for _existing_.”

Jesus Christ, was Steve this dramatic when he was thirteen? He couldn’t remember. He mostly remembered hanging out with Tommy and Carol, and them daring him to try to get random girls to make out with him. Nancy was the first girl they hadn’t dared him into dating.

“I don’t think you should take it that personal,” Steve told him, looking back over his shoulder at Nancy. She was bent over El’s paper with her pink pen, making marks on it. “Your sister is very serious about school work.”

“El’s not even _in_ school!”

Okay. That was it. Slapping his hand down on the table, Steve said, “Listen up, dickhead. Do you want to be dating someone who only knows what she can learn from TV? Is that what you want? Someone who you get to explain everything to, and feel smart around all the time? Or do you want to date someone wonderful, who keeps surprising you with all the stuff she’s learned from people who aren’t you? Someone who keeps you on your toes? Chill out and let her grow, jackass!”

Mike gulped, his eyes wide. But then he frowned and insisted, “I don’t–”

“Bullshit.” Steve rolled his eyes. “Look, maybe it’s just because her dad is dating my sort-of-mom-type-person and I’ve never really had a little sister before, but if you keep El down by distracting her and then outgrow her and hurt her? If she doesn’t kill you, I will. Got it?”

Nodding furiously, Mike said, “Got it!”

“Okay.” Steve took a deep breath, shaking some of the tension out of his shoulders. “Good. Enjoy your milkshake.”

Steve went back to work, watching as Mike watched El and had a whole hilarious journey of facial expressions as he wrapped his head around the point Steve had made. 

Steve had never been one of the smartest kids in the class, like Mike or Nancy, but he wasn’t the dumbest, either. And he knew _people_. He saw how the nerds his age said and did exactly the wrong things to get people to like them. He didn’t want El to end up with someone like that. And honestly, he didn’t want Mike to become someone like that, either. 

Hopefully he would see how awesome it was to date someone really smart, like Nancy, or really well-read, like Jonathan. Like, sure, there was space for Mike to help El out with some stuff. Nancy helped Steve with his school work all the time, but Steve knew most of what he did before he started dating her. That just wasn’t the case for Mike and El. It made Steve feel protective. 

Maybe it was stupid, feeling protective of a girl with superpowers, who he only really knew from hanging around at Jonathan’s house on the rare occasions that he wasn’t working or at basketball practice. But Steve couldn’t help it. She had this wide-open quality about her, and she believed everything people told her. He knew people like his dad, or like Tommy, who would take advantage of that. Like hell was Mike going to become like them. Not on Steve’s watch. No, sir.

The study session ended when Lucas, Max, and Dustin showed up. Nancy came over to the counter, sitting on one of the stools and making eyes at Steve. He grinned at her as he finished up taking and filling orders. Then he went to her, leaning across the counter and puckering his lips until she laughed and gave him a kiss. 

“What did you say to Mike?” she asked, stirring the dregs of her milkshake with her straw. 

“Just…” Steve said, looking over at the way Mike placed his arm around El’s shoulders, with great care. “Just the kind of shit a guy needs to hear from a big brother.” He shrugged. “Advice about girls.”

“What do _you_ know about girls?” Nancy teased, smiling at him around her straw.

“I know how to be in awe of them every damn day,” he told her.

Nancy scrunched up her nose, and oh, yeah. Steve was getting lucky tonight, for sure. 

He noticed Jonathan’s car pull up outside, so he filled a glass with root beer, dropped a scoop of vanilla ice cream into it, and added both a straw and a spoon. He set it at the counter seat next to Nancy’s, and gave Jonathan a little salute when he walked in the door. 

“Hey,” Jonathan said, kissing Nancy’s cheek and clasping Steve’s hand in the way that become their sanitized public greeting, instead of a kiss. “Thanks,” he said of the float, sitting down and looking at the kids over in the corner booth. “They keeping you on your toes?”

Before he could answer, Nancy said, “Steve has taken it upon himself to give big-brotherly advice to Mike.”

Jonathan’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh?”

“Well,” Steve said, lowering his voice as he leaned closer to both of them. “It was half advice, and half a threat that if he hurts El, he dies.”

Nodding, Jonathan shrugged. “Sounds reasonable to me.” He turned to Nancy and asked her, “You mind if we kill your brother?”

“I’d only mind if he didn’t deserve it,” she replied with a giggle. She leaned her head against Jonathan’s shoulder and asked Steve, “How much longer until you get off?”

“About two and a half hours,” he told her, stealing a sip of Jonathan’s float.

“You close at 10:15?” Nancy asked.

“No, I close at 10.” Steve grinned. “I figured the fifteen minutes would be how long it would take to get me off afterward.”

Nancy stifled her laugh with her hand, and Jonathan choked on his soda. He coughed a few times before hissing, “Shit, Steve! A little warning next time!”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

~*~

**_April 1985_ **

El watched with fascination as Nancy painted her toenails pink. “Now, it’ll take a few minutes to dry,” Nancy told her, “so you can’t let them touch anything for awhile.”

“How long is awhile?” El asked as Nancy finished the last toe.

“Not sure,” Nancy told her. “Five or ten minutes, probably.” Sitting back, Nancy admired her work. “What do you think?”

El smiled, spreading out her toes. “I like them.”

“Good.” Nancy looked through the bottles she’d brought with her to the Byers house for their spring break hang out day. Hopper was out of town for the night, testifying in some case at the courthouse in Indianapolis. Joyce had insisted that El stay at the house, and Nancy couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her on her own for the whole day in a house full of boys while Joyce was at work. So, nail polish. “Which color should I do mine?”

El looked over the colors and picked a bright, fire-engine red. Then shyly, she asked. “Can I try?”

Nancy smiled at El’s earnest question. How could she say no to that? “Sure.”

She shook up the bottle of polish and loosened the cap before handing it over to El. This was the kind of thing she’d dreamed about doing, before Mike was born and it turned out he was a _brother._ And Holly was still too little to do most of the sister stuff Nancy had always imagined. 

El took the cap off the bottle and concentrated intently as she painted Nancy’s right big toe. For a beginner, she was pretty good. Most of the polish ended up on Nancy’s nail, rather than on the skin around it. 

As El moved to the next toe over, she said, “I’m confused about something.”

“What is it?”

“Hop like-likes Joyce,” she said, her eyes still intently trained on Nancy’s toe.

“Yes,” Nancy replied, wondering where this was headed. 

“And Jonathan like-likes you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But he also like-likes Steve.”

“Did he tell you that?” Nancy asked, not exactly sure how much she was allowed to tell El. Sure, all the other kids knew at this point, but there was still so much that El _didn’t_ know about the world. “Or did Mike tell you?”

“No one told me,” she said, looking up at Nancy. “I just _know_ things sometimes.” The hard look in El’s eyes made Nancy want to shiver. 

She pushed that feeling away, instead asking, “So, what are you confused about?”

El scrunched up her face and got back to painting. “In all the TV stories when a person like-likes two different people, those people fight. Why don’t you and Steve fight?”

Oh, boy. It was difficult enough explaining this to Mike. Now Nancy had to explain it to El, too? She decided to start by asking, “Can you tell how I feel about Steve?”

El looked up and thought about this for a moment. “You like-like him.”

“And about Jonathan?”

“Same.”

“Right. And Steve feels that way about me and Jonathan,” Nancy told her. “So nobody fights. We all just…love each other.”

“Oh.” El thought about this for another second before saying, “Okay. That makes sense.”

“It makes sense to us, anyway,” Nancy said with a sigh. “But there are a lot of people who wouldn’t like it if they knew.”

Frowning, El looked up at her. “Which people?”

“My parents,” Nancy admitted as El moved from her ring toe to her pinky toe. “Steve’s too. A lot of the kids and teachers at school. Most of the people in this town, actually.”

“They think you should fight?” El asked. “Like on the TV?”

“That’s part of it.” Nancy wasn’t sure how to go about explaining the rest. 

El got halfway through painting Nancy’s left big toe when she paused and looked up. “Why are you sad? Did I do it wrong?”

“No, sweetie, no,” Nancy assured her. “It looks great! I’m just …” Sighing, she admitted, “Some people don’t think Jonathan and Steve should like each other. They think there’s something weird or wrong about it.”

El pressed her lips together and went back to painting. Nancy thought that might have been the end of the conversation, but then El spoke in a soft voice. “Some of the people at the lab, especially the ones with guns, used to think I was weird and wrong. They were afraid of me.”

“If people knew about Steve and Jonathan,” Nancy whispered, “they’d be afraid of them, too.”

“Want to hurt them?”

Nancy nodded.

Clenching her jaw, but keeping her eyes on Nancy’s toes, El told her, “I won’t let them.”

Surprised, Nancy laughed a little bit. “I appreciate that.”

There was a scrabble of bikes in the driveway and sneakers on the porch before the door burst open, and the rest of Mike’s friends descended on the house. Max dropped down on the floor next to El, saying, “Oh, sweet! I’m next!”

El grinned at her and pointed to the set of polishes Nancy had brought. “Colors.”

“These are all _super_ girly,” Max said. “No offense, Nancy.”

“Um, none taken?” Nancy replied. 

"Ooh!" Max picked out a dark maroon color. “Now _this_ is what I’m talking about!”

Will, Mike, and Dustin streamed out of Will’s room, collapsing on various surfaces around the living room and yelling about some movie they _had_ to watch. Eventually, when her toenails were dry, Nancy headed back to Jonathan’s room. She crawled into bed next to Steve, using him as a pillow for a well-deserved nap.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading and commenting!
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](https://pterawaters.tumblr.com/) and [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/pterawaters).


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